Dulcy Mahar: Enjoy those garden catalogs, but exercise caution

I thought I'd put the garden on the back burner, finally gotten my fingernails clean and set aside a stack of books to read over the coming dark days. Finally the garden and I were put to bed -- or so I thought. Then came the first catalog. Yeah, I know, pretty early. Isn't it some kind of felony to put up Christmas decorations or read flower catalogs before Thanksgiving? Not one to be overly observant of protocols, I grabbed the thing and jumped in the bathtub for a read. By the time I emerged, resembling a large pink prune, I realized I was stirred up and thinking of spring.

I couldn't believe this. Apparently we gardeners have a pilot light that keeps flickering even on the rainiest, darkest days. And it doesn't take much to have that little flame flare up. The catalog definitely fanned that flame.

Catalogs make great bathtub reading. They're lightweight, and if you fall asleep and drop them in the water, you haven't lost the thread of who the murderer might be. It won't be long before a deluge of catalogs with spring flowers will start arriving. They will be a delight, but there are some things to be cautious about.

Long ago, I stopped ordering plants from out of state. (I don't consider the Vancouver area as out of state.) I'm sure many mail order nurseries from afar are thoroughly reliable and can provide you with rare and unusual plants, if that's what you want. But they'd have to be really rare and unusual if they're not available in the Northwest, which as we all know is the nation's epicenter of gardening. We're even seeing exotic plants from the Southwest and South Africa available locally.

The plants I got from out of state, even the much heralded Heronswood Nursery when it was in Kingston, Wash., appeared well-packaged but were very small and droopy. I planted them right away as instructed, but few survived. I don't know why, but others have told me they'd had the same experience.

Also, catalogs tend to emphasize new introductions. They may be great, or they may be inferior to and distract you from old standbys. Is the new cultivar really as garden worthy? You have to judge. I've often found that certain new cultivars in exotic colors -- Coreopsis or Echinacea, for example -- are not as hardy or not as robust.

Another caution. I keep seeing that "blooms spring through fall" line. That usually means it's a repeat bloomer. There'll be a beneficence of flowers in spring; they'll die down but then come back in late summer, usually not as bountifully. This is not a bad thing, unless you really are expecting six months of glorious nonstop bloom.

Color also can be problematic. You will seldom get hydrangeas as blue as in the photos or geraniums with true ruby-red flowers. The first will have a lavender tint, and the second will be on the pinkish side. These are just two examples. It's not the nurseries' fault. It's hard to capture true color in a photo, and printing it on recycled paper (which is a good thing) rather than high gloss tends to muddy the photo.

These are not really big problems. It's just a suggestion not to have undue expectations. That can happen, you know. One year a nursery, since out of business, listed a plant with a description like this: Blooms from spring to fall, gorgeous flowers that start out pink and turn blue, attractive disease-free foliage that is repellent to slugs, can take sun or shade, dry or wet conditions and does well even in heavy clay soil.

Of course there's no such plant, but the nursery owners told me they got a huge number of orders. Hope that's not why they went out of business.